Record of Light

Many people have been suggesting more photos! I thought that was awesome suggestion. So here it goes right off the bat =) (I ended the post with a bunch of shots as well, don't forget to check it out!)

After 8 hours of out shooting over 2 days, I finally got some decent photos that I am not ashamed of showing out of my new baby - Canon EF 70-200 F4L IS. Here are some of my initial impressions of this lens!

How/Why I've got it
Now I've been lusting over this lens for almost a year. I always felt inadequate on the longer focal length with both my kit lens (18-55) as well as my 50/1.8 prime. I considered several options to compensate for that missing range:
1) Canon EF 55-200 F4-5.6 IS 2) Canon EF 70-300 IS USM 3) Canon EF 70-200 F4L

I bought this lens used off of bccamera forum after careful considerations (which can be a whole other post), and decided I would get this as a little treat to myself for getting into medical school.

Condition of the Lens
Since I bought this lens used, I thought I'd comment on the condition. The lens was date coded UW = manufactured in 2008. The seller bought both a nikon and a canon system and decided to stick with nikon. He hardly used this lens at all. It was brand new, wrapped in original packaging and came with all original receipt and warranty. Not a single scratch on the glass or barrel (not a single peck of dust on the glass). Lens was essentially in perfect condition.

3 Reasons I Fell in Love with This Lens:

Colour
This is the main reason why I fell in love with this lens. The very first thing I noticed ever since the tests shots is how vibrant and lively the colour is. All of the shots below are NOT photoshoped originals. The ability of this lens to see those vibrant colours are really making me look pro even I simply pointed and shooted some of the shots. I especially loved the skin tone rendering on this lens (maybe it's those girls' good make up), it does starting to look like some of the professional wedding photography (minus the creative skills on my part of course =P)

Bokeh
Bokeh is the next best thing I felt with this lens. As soon as I took it outside and started shooting, I noticed how incredibly smooth and pleasing those bokehs are! For those of you who don't know, bokeh refers to the out of focus region (ie. the blur region) of a photograph. As shown in the top left photo, the out of focus area is so fantastically rendered that it makes me not want to look at in-focus objects... The shape of the bokeh (see above for the maple leaf photo) is very pleasingly round due to the whopping 8-blades aperture (compared to my 5-blade aperture on 50mm/1.8 - a pentagon shaped bokeh if you look closely at photos from before).

Sharpness
And finally, the sharpeness. This lens is arguably the sharpest lens in the entire Canon EF telephoto zoom collection. the image remains sharp even at 100% crop (full size picture, not shown here). Both of the pictures below are taken at 200mm, and as you can see the telephoto end is incredibly sharp even when hand-held (all photos here are hand-held, IS assisted). The Vancouver skyline is taken on the mountain of QE park, so you Vancouverites can figure out the distance... As you can see from previous pictures, this lens really gives you the sharpness you want in the area you focus on.

Some Mechanics (USM Focus, IS)
When I was doing my homework and decide if I wanted to pay 500 dollars on IS, I had no idea that it could be SO useful. Now that I got the IS version, I thought that was money well spent. As an amateur who does photography to capture life's moments, I do NOT bring my tripod around. Most of my photos are taken hand-held. The IS on this lens worked like a charm for me. I can see the drastic effect right in the view finder as the image stopped moving as soon as I half-press my shutter. I tried turning the IS off at the 200mm end, I observed significant amount of shaking in the view finder. While it may be OK with shutter speed >1/100, but as soon as you go down to 1/50, 1/20, the shake becomes obvious and detrimental. With the aperture only goes down to F4, I would HIGHLY recommend the IS feature, not to mention the IS version is optically a different lens compared to the non-IS version as this one is essentially remade ~10 years later.

The USM focusing on this lens is superb. My dad could not get over how quiet, fast, and accurate this lens focus. The lens literally snap into focus as soon as the shutter is half pressed with none of those mechanical clank clank focusing business going on.

Macro
I use this lens sometimes to dub as a macro lens due to the ability to show finest details as well as a shallow depth of field.

Challenges
The foremost challenge I have with this lens currently is the sudden change of mentality when taking photos. With it's fabulous zoom, I suddenly lost the privilege to be immersed in the photo that I'm taking. Many times my photos look detached, distant, and with no central theme. This will definitely take some time to get used to, as it did for my 50mm prime.

All in all, I am extremely happy with this lens and am looking forward to shoot more with it!

More Shots with 70-200mm F4L IS